I am sure this has happened to all of us, sometime or the other – waking up in the middle of the night and then being unable to go back to sleep. Now what do you do when you are awake? Usually I fight to go back to sleep. I keep tossing and turning…keep telling myself 'go to sleep go to sleep'. More often than not this doesn't work. The same thing happened yesterday night. All of a sudden I found myself looking at the ceiling. I turned sideways and the bedside clock said 3:05 am. As is my habit I started tell myself to 'fall asleep' when all of a sudden an idea came to mind. I decided that today I won't make any effort, I won't struggle. I'll just lie there, silently, quietly and see what happened. Did I succeed? Yes. The blinds on our door were not rolled down yesterday (which was good) because it was a full moon night and the moonlight flooded the balcony and also half our room. I looked at the silhouette of the huge trees standing tall and straight, the plants in my balcony, their leaves swaying ever so slightly and shining bright when it caught the moonlight. It was all so quiet, which was broken down occasionally by the whoosh of a car. And then my ears caught a steady rhythmic sound pattern. It was my husband breathing -- in and out, in and out, with the occasional sighs. Listening to the beat of his breathing I thought what would it look like if I started plotting his breathing pattern on a graph? And when I tried to imagine the graph pattern the stock market graph patterns came to mind. (This I'm pretty sure is a result of all the stock market review we do first thing in the morning.) Considering his breathing pattern yesterday it would have looked like the graph of Cisco – stable with minor deflections. I know there have been days when his breathing pattern very much resembles that of Aruba (his own company), swinging from highs to lows, stable for a brief while, then back to swinging again. And somewhere in the middle of all this Cisco and Aruba graph plotting I fell asleep, only to wake up at the sound of an emergency siren which was nothing else but our alarm!
After successfully putting off going to the zumba class for 2-3 months my success rate fell to zero as I succumbed to the persuasive qualities of my husband's smooth talking. It's amazing how he could make me believe that there's no harm in giving it a shot. And you would be surprised if you knew me. To say that I have two left feet is an understatement. And the one person who'll believe that without any doubt is my mother. Being a trained oriental dancer, she tried early on to pass on her skills to me. Like every other Bengali parent, she also had the wish that her daughter would know how to sing and dance and paint, the three things I found all of my friends and class mates engaged in, if not all three of them at least two of them with painting being the common factor. My painting, rather drawing skills at grade four convinced my parents that their money would be better spent in any other project than sending to me an art class. Since I could not draw at that time (I can copy pictures decently now and that too with pastel. If you hand me a brush I'll end up painting something like a 3 year old) all my science drawings were done either by mom or my bro, who is also a good painter. The day I drew the cow, I had a fight with my brother and he refused to help me. Proud that as I was, I drew the cow all by myself, and I can't quite describe to you how it looked. Any angle you turned the picture it didn't resemble a cow. At best it could be described as the symbolization of some pre historic animal. After seeing that picture my brother took pity on me, and drew the cow. Coming back to the point, one fine day my mother decided to teach me how to dance. I was nine or ten years old. I think she tried to make my body move to the tunes of a rabindrasangeet. My body moved. But the way it moved was enough to convince my mom to say, with great sadness, that I don't have it in me. Dance is something not meant for me. And with that she had to let go of her dream. If circumstances were different she would either have been a professional dancer, or at least a dance teacher. And I could do nothing but feel sad to let her down. Some things are just not meant for you. After that there was no more dancing for me, other than the occasional group dances in college fests and stuff where basically you are having fun. Then came my husband into the picture. Like my mother, he also had dreams that his wife would go to dance clubs and do the salsa and tango and you name it. To give him credit, he does know the salsa. in grad school he had taken salsa classes. I wonder which hot female in the class was the inspiration for this (sshh). So after two months in the U.S. he finally coaxed me into going to the downtown club which offered salsa lessons. So we went to the club and the lady who would teach us gave a performance before the lesson started. As she and her partner danced they were the epitome of sheer grace and rhythm. Their bodies moved in sync with the music like flowing water. Looking at them I realized that I had made a terrible mistake in succumbing to my husband's pressure. He did not know my skills. But I did. Anyways since the club had charged a fee of 20$ per person which was enough for me to gather up my courage and hit the dance floor. And contrary to my expectations I didn't do all that bad. Things were ok, I'd say though my hips didn't move as vibrantly as they are supposed to in a salsa. The best part was I was enjoying myself, until the time where we had to switch partners every few steps. And that was enough to put me off from salsa. I remember a few of my 'partners' – among them was a guy who trembled quite a bit and was so nervous that he couldn't hold my hands properly and I could feel the tremble between his fingers and there was another who probably had had a burger just before entering the club and he reeked of raw onions and sweat. I was relieved when my husband came along but that relief was short lived. So that was the end of my salsa and also my husband's and he very much rues the fact. It is probably from this fact and the more important fact that I have gained some weight, actually a lot of it that my husband again found the enthusiasm to persuade me to go for the zumba. Upon entering the class I saw that most people were very fit and athletic but I also found a few who were in much worse shape than I was. Or so I loved to believe. Anyways the class started to the beats of salsa music and after staring at people for a while, trying to figure out what was going on I joined everyone. And once I let go off my inhibitions, put all those previous experiences behind me, I actually had fun. I didn't do it right all the time…when people went left I went right, when they bent down I stood straight like a sore thumb…but I found the rhythm that is part of dance. And at the end of the day that is what matters, finding your rhythm. And in this endeavor I even formed a camaraderie with a Chinese lady who was next to me. Judging from the movement of her hands and feet I figured she was as good as a dancer as I was and her shy smile when our eyes met seemed to confirm it. We formed an invisible bond and smiled at each other when our eyes met while one of us was turning in the wrong direction. What struck me was the energy of the whole exercise. At home the very thought of exercising for an hour, coupled with seeing the youtube videos on zumba made my body ache. But out there on the floor the beats of the music, the energetic 1,2,3,4 of the instructor and the energy of the people around totally changed the scenario. Yes I did get tired, and I did pause frequently to catch my breath but I never felt like walking out of the room. And to think that I shook my hips to Shakira's 'Hips don't lie'…come on after all I have told you about my dancing abilities you have to admit that it is no mean task! (Luckily there was no video tape of the whole thing or else it could easily have made it into the funniest home videos show.) And then there was J.Lo and a whole bunch of lively music including 'Jai Ho' from Slumdog Millionaire and 'Yeh ishq hai' from Jab We Met. In the manner of exercise it also helped me brush up my almost forgotten salsa steps and introduced me to Bollywood dancing. The Yeh ishq hai number was quite exhausting with a lot of bending, stretching involved but the fact that it was a familiar desi number gave me that extra boost of energy. And later that night I called up my mom and said that I had been to a dance class. Did I detect a subtle amazement, a flicker of happiness in her voice? Or was it just me in my still excited state?
Holud (in Bengali), an essential ingredient in Indian cooking is better known to the world as turmeric. Indian cooking can't be done without turmeric. It gives that distinct yellow color to foods -- curries, fries, anything. Every savory food you can think of has turmeric in it, even if it is just a hint. But as a kid I was not too fond of the yellow color food. Maybe because it was the norm, it was what we had every day that I wanted something different. One thing which I craved for was the alu bhaja (fried potatoes) without turmeric. I don't know what it was that enthralled me about this dish being cooked without turmeric. The first time I saw those non yellow potato fries was in a friend's lunch box. Probably that was the source of the fascination. At age eight or nine it is what others have that is always much more interesting and better than what you have. It was also escalated by the fact that my mom never cooked without turmeric. Primarily because my dad didn't like food which looked pale. He always ate with his eyes first, as do most of us. So food which didn't have turmeric didn't appeal to him and it automatically lost its taste. And then one day my dream came true. My dad was away on an office trip and mom made the alu bhaja without turmeric. It is a very simple dish where the potatoes are seasoned with salt and turmeric and then shallow fried with some sliced onions and green chili. Dinner that day consisted of bhaat (rice), daal (lentils) and alu bhaja without turmeric. To this day it remains my favorite dish, my ultimate comfort food and whenever I don't feel like cooking I always boil some rice and lentils and make some potato fries, though surprisingly I do add turmeric now. That craze about eating pale colored foods has left me, probably for good as turmeric is said to have many medicinal properties and known to treat digestive and liver problems. One other source of my rebellion against the turmeric could be the fact that during fall every year, I was forced to eat an inch of raw turmeric root with some gur (a sort of molasses). The raw root has a very bitter taste and it leaves a strong aftertaste in the mouth. In India, fall is a fleeting season with a nip in the air, and a time when people are caught unawares by the change in season. Everywhere you look, you can see people coughing and sneezing and blowing their nose. The purpose of the turmeric was to make the immune system stronger, to help the body stay healthy and sound. The days when dad gave it (sometimes mom would give it with a generous helping of molasses) was bad because he was very stingy with the molasses. He practically preferred to give just the raw root. But when he saw that it was impossible to make me eat without the molasses he would just brush it lightly with the molasses. And the worst part was I had to sit in front of him and chew and swallow the entire thing right before his eyes. So there was no way of escaping. And all the time I chewed, I would grumble about how my teeth would look yellow and how my friends would tease me, and my dad would go on about how this was good for health because it was a blood purifier, and how it has been used since ancient times and so on. Much as I hated it at that time I do miss the routine now, though I don't miss the bitter taste. And it did help in preventing sickness during the change of seasons. Though my parents always talked about the medicinal aspects of turmeric I didn't quite believe in it until I sprained my leg. I was in high school then and I slipped down the stairs and sprained my right ankle. Within seconds I saw my ankle swell up to the size of a soft ball. "Great!" I thought. "Now I can miss my Shakespeare test tomorrow." But that happy feeling didn't last long as turmeric played spoilsport. My mom heated up some turmeric paste, combined it with some quicklime, applied the mixture to the swollen area and tightly wrapped it up with a piece of cloth. Within a few hours the swelling had decreased considerably and I had to concentrate on Shakespeare once again. The next day I limped to school and took the test. Turmeric also plays a major role in the cultural life of Bengalis. Any auspicious occasion like a puja (worshipping God) or a wedding can never take place without turmeric. In a wedding the use of turmeric starts right away at the invitations being sent out. When invitations are sent, a corner of the envelope is first smeared with turmeric. This signifies good luck. Mostly the younger people in the family do this job and I remember doing it, along with a bunch of other cousins, for my uncle's and my cousin's wedding. Both the weddings took place when I was in school. It was fun as well as tedious. Fun because we could skip studies and tedious because there would be two to three hundred cards per wedding, sometimes even more. I did the same during my marriage too. Usually we would take a card, smear it with turmeric on the top left hand corner and then move it aside. Then one of my cousins devised a method. He laid out 15-20 cards, each overlapping the other in a way that their top left hand corners were exposed. Then he took the turmeric and just smeared it through in a straight line thus covering twenty cards at one go. And it was more fun to do it this way. After it was smeared with turmeric we had to write the address, attach stamps and seal the envelopes. In other words, make it ready to be posted. And for all this we were treated to something. For my uncle's wedding I negotiated a quarter for every invitation that we processed, to which my dad, who was the organizer, agreed. And for my cousin's wedding I got treated to loads of ice cream. The beginning of a Bengali wedding is marked by the drawing of the Hindu symbol of swastika on a wall with a paste of turmeric and vermilion. It is supposed to bring good luck to the new bride and groom. And then there is an entire ceremony which consists solely of turmeric. It is called gaye holud (applying turmeric to the body). This is a fun and elaborate ceremony. In this ritual, turmeric roots are ground to a paste, mixed with mustard oil, applied to the groom's body and then the same paste is sent over to the bride's house to be applied on the bride's body. I had lots of fun at numerous weddings of friends and cousins smearing them with turmeric paste. All the turmeric I had smeared on numerous cousins, relatives and friends' at their weddings came to haunt me as my friends and family made it their mission to turn me into a yellow ghost with success. And after they were finished with me they suddenly turned upon each other, each attacking the other with turmeric paste until suddenly the place was filled with shouts and squeals and laughter, and everyone looked yellowish and like creatures from a different planet and then there was no mistaking the fact that there was a wedding in the house.
